Director and conductor,
Valery Gergiev is the festival’s honorary president. This year he will conclude
the orchestral program by conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, played by
the London Symphony Orchestra, whose principal conductor Gergiev has been for
eight years.

Books, music and
vodka

Another Russian
conductor, Vasily Petrenko, leads the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra’s rendition
of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, described as “intense, achingly melodic and
hugely emotional”. Young soprano Valentina Naforniţa will also perform
“intense” Russian vocal works by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. Vodka distiller
Russian Standard is sponsoring a program of concerts in Hub Sessions at the
main festival.

As usual, Edinburgh’s
International Book Festival has numerous Russia-related events. There are
literary experts: Translator Rosamund Bartlett talks
about her new version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; head of the
Scottish Poetry Library, Robyn Marsack, explores Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin
and two graphic novelists give a workshop on Bulgakov’s The Master and
Margarita.

Contemporary
literature is often influenced by Russia, from Andrea Bennett’s debut novel, Galina Petrovna’s Three-Legged Dog Story to the new wave of Cold War thrillers.
And there is also this year’s crop of memoirs set in Russia, including Rory
MacLean’s Back in the USSR: Heroic Adventures in Transnistria,
Peter Pomerantsev’s Nothing is True and Everything is Possible and Ben
Stewart’s account of his time in prison, when a Greenpeace protest in the
Arctic ended in a Murmansk jail.

Jazz and
Tsars

The Fringe Festival,
typically, offers even more eclectic fare; along with music, art and drama,
there is humor, belly dancing and screenings of Dziga Vertov’s pioneering 1929
film, Man with a Movie Camera. Russian-born trumpet-player Valery
Ponomarev brings his hi-octane quintet to the fringe from New York. They’ll be playing
late nights in the Jazz Bar. Tangos for Tea includes music from Russia and
the Balkans along with tea and shortbread.

Moscow-based Courage
theatre is staging an interactive kids’ show about equality called Colors.
Former Moscow basketball champion, Vasily Slinkin, part of this talented
ensemble troop, says he loves acting for children because: “Their eyes believe
in the magic that is happening on the stage!” Meanwhile, Popinjay Productions
have more entertainment for kids with a Russian folk tale about poor Peter’s
search for a flying ship in order to win the Tsar’s daughter. His quest becomes
a series of amusing adventures, involving music and puppetry.

Tragedies and satire

Some productions at this
year’s Fringe draw their inspiration from Russia’s tempestuous history.
Livewire Theatre is staging Romanovs, a drama that imagines rumored sightings
of the murdered imperial family. Sandbach School in Cheshire are performing Kursk, a play based on the Russian submarine disaster fifteen years ago.
This
year’s festival exhibition in St Mary's Cathedral, combining tapestries,
banners and photographs, is on the theme of Arctic Convoys during World War
II.

There are Russian
literary influences at work too in the Fringe Festival. A Korean group called
Brush Theatre are presenting a non-verbal version of Nikolai Gogol’s The
Overcoat,
while Ditto Productions are staging Gogol’s bitterly satirical play, Marriage, with a high-flying cast of comedians.

Works by Anton Chekhov
are even more popular. Absolute Theatre is presenting a patchwork of Chekhov’s
short stories in what they describe as: “a kaleidoscopic production, capturing
the essence of a parochial Russia where cruelty, absurdity and social satire
are dished out in equal measure.” In the gardens of Duddingston Kirk Manse,
underneath Arthur’s Seat on the shores of a loch, Theatre Alba are also
adapting Chekhov’s stories for a show called The Good Doctor. Alba have a distinctly
Russian theme going on: their morning show is an outdoor, promenade
performance, based on the folk tale Baba Yaga and they are also producing an
afternoon monologue, as part of a double bill, called Smoking Is Bad For You, a version of Chekhov’s
short comedyOn the Harmful Effects of
Tobacco.

Chekhov and sex

Three Candles Theatre
Company describes The Nina Variations as a “tribute” to Chekhov's Seagull. Subtext Theatre has another unorthodox
approach to the well-known playwright: a new musical called Chekhov
with Cherries. Characters from Chekhov’s various plays are
re-invented, meet and interact, dreaming, as the Three Sisters famously do, of
Moscow. The production boasts: “over a hundred cheeky Chekhov
references and jokes” plus “a subtle nod towards current Russian
politics”.

Red-lipsticked Nastya
Rybachuk serves up more sexy Russianness in her seductive selection of
performance poetry, For Big Boys Only. Meanwhile, Russian dance
teacher, Miroslava Bronnikova, who juggles, acts and belly dances under the
stage name Shantisha, is returning to Edinburgh with a free show called Shake'n'Shimmy.

Elsewhere,
percussionist Evelyn Glennie has teamed up with the Russian visual artist Maria
Rud to produce The Animotion Show. Rud, who is in Edinburgh for the first
time, paints, scratches and wipes on a backlit glass screen to produce
immediate works of art that evolve as the audience watches, changing scale,
mood and tempo. The paintings will be beamed live onto the walls a 17th-century
quadrangle. Edinburgh offers its usual fusion of histories and cultures,
stories and songs, a powerful crucible for the art forms of the future.